A communication network may include network elements that route packets through the network. Some network elements may include a distributed architecture, wherein packet processing may be distributed among several subsystems of the network element (e.g., line cards).
Service Operation, Administration, and Management (“Service OAM” or “SOAM”), is defined by IEEE 802.1ag and defines Maintenance Entity Group End Points (MEPs) that may be provisioned on a network element. A MEP may be associated with a particular maintenance level (e.g., 0 to 7) and may be configured to communicate traffic, for example continuity check messages (CCMs), to a peer MEP at the same maintenance level that resides in the communication network. CCMs may be periodically communicated between MEPs at the same maintenance level, and a service is considered down if a MEP does not receive a CCM from its peer MEP within a certain time.
Often, in response to a failure to detect the CCM from a peer MEP within a certain time, a MEP may issue an alarm. Such an alarm may indicate a connectivity problem, and thus may trigger any number of responses, including, without limitation, redundancy protection (e.g., protection switching in accordance with the ITU G.8031 standard), reduction in traffic, or other response. Such alarms may be in accordance with the IEEE 802.1ag standard and/or the ITU Y.1731 standard.
However, instances exist in which an alarm message may be generated by a MEP despite the fact that a data path in the data plane for a service is still operational. For example, the following events may cause a SOAM alarm for a service (e.g., a Loss of Continuity, or “LOC” alarm), despite the fact that a data path for the service remains operational:                MEP software for a peer MEP restarts;        a peer MEP is provisioned with ADMINSTATE down;        a peer MEP level is mis-provisioned (e.g., provisioned with incorrect level);        a peer MEP is provisioned with an incorrect direction;        a peer MEP is provisioned on incorrect service;        a peer MEP Maintenance Entity Group name is mis-provisioned;        an intermediate MEP with incorrect higher MEP level exists;        a duplicate MEP exists;        a peer MEP has CCM disabled;        a peer MEP is not provisioned;        unmatched CCM intervals exists between peer MEPs; and        any other suitable event.        
Traditionally, the SOAM standard makes no distinction between service-affecting alarms (alarms occurring in connection with an actual data path connectivity issue) and non-service affecting alarms (alarms that occur despite data path remaining operational). Such lack of distinction is often problematic, as such alarms may still trigger responses (whether automatic responses or manual human response by a network provider), and may thus hamper productivity and network performance.